Michigana

[nuncstans]

I'm tired of the lie that Midwesterners are straight-taahkin', haanest-dealin', friendly blond goyim. Midwesterners are mean!

anarqueso got me thinking about this with her post about community. Readers, I am rarely depressed. I mean, I get "depressed", like when it's gray outside and I'm bored and broke, and I have a hunger headache and I see a poster for

Comments

[nuncstans]

The thing is, I hate it when people living in metropolitan areas look down on the periphery. I try not to make assumptions about people I don't know (but not-making-assumptions itself might be a metropolitan trait, because you know first-hand, from daily contact with a wide range of people, that you can't tell crazy by the accent or the suit it's wearing).

But I really wanted to love the Midwest. I still kind of do want to love it. With the UPS lady, I was ready to triumph Michigan as a place where even terrible corporations could function locally in a human way (no UPS in NY has EVER acknowledged the possibility of telling me when they'd actually show up).

But I find conformism really cloying. I asked my students a question the first day (did they want to read this thing in class, or at home) and nobody answered. I asked again. Silence. I said ok, raise your hand if you want to read this here. Everybody looked around, nobody raised their hand. I feel like this creeping authoritarianism in our culture is just much more obvious here, and it freaks me out.

[hunterxtc]

I asked my students a question the first day (did they want to read this thing in class, or at home) and nobody answered. I asked again. Silence. I said ok, raise your hand if you want to read this here. Everybody looked around, nobody raised their hand.

Could it just be because the students are lazy asses who didn't read the assignment, and they were just being honest? I had this same experience in my east coast schooling... but then again, most people at BU had been out partying the night before, so they perhaps had a legit reason not to answer. But there is always one know it all in class who wants to show off- I'm surprised your class didn't have one!

[nuncstans]

It was the first day!

[smallstages]

What you say here really resonates with me -- this bit about hating it when people living in metropolitan areas (or, even, just on the West Coast in general) look down on the periphery (or the whole rest of the country except for the East Coast). I applied to several Midwest schools for just this reason -- I was feeling a bit like I was living in a bubble and was losing sight of what the rest of the "American experience" is, even though I grew up in Louisiana and Texas. Fifteen years on the West Coast had made me feel like nothing existed beyond the West Coast, you know? I know what it's like to be queer in liberal West Coast communities. What's it like to be queer in Bloomington. But now I have these creeping doubts. I don't need to be a queer hero!